My official portrait

Heres Brian from Kila who was once an assitant animator in Disney Paris doing a very flattering portrait of me in my new computer - next door an amazing cacophany of percussion is happening 

Screen Daily

WestEnd hears Song of the Sea

7 FEBRUARY, 2014 | BY ANDREAS WISEMAN

EXCLUSIVE: The Secret of Kells director’s sophomore animation gets sales company.

WestEnd Films has signed on to sell Tom Moore’s anticipated animation Song of the Sea, the director’s follow up to Oscar-nominated animation The Secret of Kells.

Brendan Gleeson, Fionnula Flanagan, David Rawle, Lisa Hannigan, Pat Shortt and Jon Kenny are among the voice cast in the Cartoon Saloon-produced family-animation, due for release late this year.

Like Moore’s previous film, Song of the Seatakes inspiration from Irish folklore, centring on the legend of the Selkies, mythological creatures that are part seal, part human.

The storyline revolves around brother and sister Ben and Saoirse, who are forced to leave their coastal home to live with their grandmother following their mother’s mysterious disappearance.

Oscar-nominated composer Bruno Coulais again joined forces with Irish Band Kíla to create the score after their collaboration on 2009 feature Kells.

Previous deals done with producers include StudioCanal for the UK and Ireland, Haut et Court and Orange Cinéma Séries in France, O Brother Distribution in Benelux and Svensk Film for Sweden and Denmark.

Cartoon Saloon co-produced with The Big Farm from Belgium, Melusine Productions from Luxembourg, Norlum from Denmark and Superprod from France.

WestEnd will be showing footage at the EFM.

Westend films announcement from Berlin

Westend Films have announced that they will be handling the international sales on our film with a piece in screen international. They also released some still images from composited scenes so I thought I would share them here too-

Music , compositing and airports

Its been too long since my last update , things have been moving very quickly and we have been busy on several fronts.

Im just back from Digital Graphics in Belgium . Adrien and I try to visit twice a month now as we near the last stages of ink and paint and compositing . 

Its all shaping up nicely but the pressure is on due to the deadline and budget constraints. 

Heres a nice pic of a stormy sea scene Damien composited - 

"one down 100s to go "as Serge said. 

Damien and Celine are in the photo - both of whom are old friends from the Secret of Kells its great to work with them again.

In the background you can see the poster for another recent project they worked on - Ernest and Celestine , a beautiful film that just won 3 awards at the Magritte film awards cermony and is nominated for an academy award next month in LA. 

I started the week here in Celbridge in Ireland with Bruno Coulais , Lisa Hannigan and Kila who are busy working on the songs and music. 

We also had little Lucey O'Connell here too recording the singing voice of Saoirse.

Our editor Darragh Byrne took some lovely photos. 

Colm was there on Monday and the rest of Kila arrived on tuesday and began recording the traditional instruments - i left for belgium just as they were getting started so i look forward to hearing what they have come up with tommorow.

They have been joined by French cellist Jean-Philippe Audin . We just had a chat and amazingly he studied music with ( our art director ) Adrien 's mum many moons ago.

 Its a small world sometimes.

I leave you with a sketch I made of Ronan from Kila on Tuesday morning and a promise to update again very soon- theres announcments happening in Berlin this week that I'm 

excited to share so stay tuned...

Frederikstad

 

Adrien and I visited Frederikstad for a couple of days last week to present some of our work in progress, it was a busy couple of days as Bruno Coulais the composer was sending us music demos and compositing from Serge Umes team still needed to be checked but we managed to work and still enjoy the festival. It was fantastic to see some if the composited images on the big screen - I took a couple of snaps with the iphone but because we showed so much of the artwork from the film we asked the audience not to record our presentation for fear of spoiling the story so far ahead of the release. 

Next week Im doing a video link up with CTN in LA to make a similar presentation - hopefully it will all go towards creating a good buzz for the film amongst animators and animation fans.

It will be live streamed online too anyone can watch ...

We were lucky enough to have "the king of indy animation" in the audience , Bill Plympton , whose new movie Cheating looks really impressive . Also we met Benjamin Renner of Ernest and Celestine as well as  some old friends from the Norwegian animation scene - my old college pal Olve and Yaprak from Frame by Frame where we did one of our first WIP presentations of Kells back in 2008.

We met many new friends and saw some impressive footage from a new stop motion Norwegian feature film.

  

Ode to Denmark

A late ode to our friends in Noerlum who are busy finishing some of the hardest acting sequences in the film at the moment.

Heres some photos from a trip to viborg fabian and i took some weeks ago -

Many of the crew have already finished up but theres still a big portion of the climatic sequences to be animated by remaining team - may your fingers and wrists stay strong and may your cintiqs never crash my friends! 

Our latest visit to Studio 352

Fabian Erlinghauser and I have been on the road lately catching up with the animation teams in luxembourg and Denmark.

First up was Luxembourg , as usual we were happy to see the team in person instead of over Skype and Hobsoft. The team is entering the last weeks of production on some of the trickiest sequences in the third act , with lots of integration between efx and characters so there was much to discuss. But the work is , as usual , of the highest calibre. I really feel that with Tvpaint we have managed to get some really full and subtle animation , ironically with more fluidity and life in it than we could have done on paper with such a small team and budget. Every frame is still hand drawn but we can manipulate and tweak much more than we could on paper with lovely subtleties in the expressions and gestures . We are really lucky to have the cream of European 2d animation talent on the film and I hope we all get to work together again soon. 

 Background supervisor Pascal and a talented young intern Sidonie.

Basque animator Denis Figueiredo animating Ben swinging a hurling stick. He showed us some photos of a sport from the Basque country that seems to be related to hurling ... Certainly I've heard of a connection between Basque and the Celtic countries before...

The very talented Nicolas  who is seen here working on a great scene he animated of Ben and Cu being reunited . Lovely character interaction and joyfulness in his animation.

Giovanna  is snapped here animating some owls and some magic ... But anymore info would be a spoiler! Giovanna has done some gorgeous animation of Saoirse with loads of appeal and charm.

Geoff is busy animating some characters that are a mix of effects and character animation . Geoff has done some great cartoony yet emotional scenes of Ferry Dan and Cu as well as our main characters..

Beth is one of the amazing clean up and assistant animators working in 352. Their work is some of the most important and technically challenging as its the final line that will end up on screen. 

Tom is a long time clean up artist with Studio 352 , the clean up team not only make the final drawings but also have to prepare the files with different coloured transistion lines for where we have textures applied at ink and paint and the sometimes complex layering needed when characters interact with each other or the backgrounds.

Randi is another talented clean up artist -  I must say although i didnt manage to get a snap for the blog  of all the talented artists working In 352 that they are all doing top notch work under a very short schedule .

Heres the one time salooner Danas who has done some great animation of Na Daoine Sidhe playing traditional instruments - maybe he got some mental reference from the sessions in Ryans pub while he was in Kilkenny?

And heres Gilles the animation supervisor whos heading up the whole team , Gilles is one of the longest serving animators in 352 and has worked on many beautiful european features and tv series. 

Stefan , Fabien , Gilles ,Fabian  and I had dinner in Stefans place on the last night of the trip... Stefans dog Choco seemed to be auditioning for the part of Cu -a big friendly fella he is too , he hangs out at the studio sometimes , I guess he was good reference for the animators.. 

As its probably the last time Ill visit Luxembourg during this production Im looking forward to seeing everyone again at the premiere :-) ...but before that we have a few more minutes of animation and cleanup to get thru ... So its heads down for another while yet...